SSBM: Adventure Mode
by Feonyx
Summary: If the twisted Mushroom Kingdom weren't enough, now a pair of wireframe warriors have made their appearance. If the Smash Bros lose, it's all over, but victory might not bring quite whate they expect...
1. A Thousand Worlds And A Thousand Times

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[Disclaimer Of The Gods] I should begin by pointing out that any inaccuracies in the following story are either artistic license or artistic allowed-ignorance license, by which I mean telling me will not change anything. ("No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.") I know very little about Earthbound, so don't expect Ness to start telling old war stories, or even mention Jeff, for example.

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[Author's Notes] Those who have read "The Battle For Digital City" have an idea of what to expect here: this is unashamedly biased towards my personal opinions (ie. Captain Falcon is a jerk) and is essentially a story about different heroes banding together against a major threat. A very feel-good story, not to mention riddled with my style of humour (or so I'd like to think). Hopefully you'll enjoy, but then again, this could be a long one, and I don't have a great track record (see "Legend of the Masks", Zelda) one long stories. The next chapter is guaranteed soon (already written) but how soon may depend on reviews. (Should you guess who the villain is, keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a wise#%&.) Anyway, enjoy, and _review_!

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SUPER SMASH BROS MELEE: ADVENTURE MODE

In the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario stood on a bridge. It was at the core of Bowser's Castle, and suspended him over a lake of molten lava that bubbled angrily. 

At the other end, Bowser stomped to the edge of the bridge, making it sway slightly. Above and behind him, Peach struggled to unlock the cage she was trapped inside.

"So it is-a down to you, an' it is-a down to me," said Mario, pulling off the doctor's coat he had used to sneak inside.

"My favourite part," growled Bowser. "But you are hardly my match."

"That's what we are-a for!" cried Luigi, as he rode Yoshi through a high tower window and down to the bridge.

"Interesting," Bowser rumbled. "This will be more of a challenge." He stepped forward onto the bridge and suddenly found that his weight, plus that of two plumbers and a dragon, was too much for the ancient bridge, which snapped neatly and dropped them to the lava.

In Hyrule, a young Link stepped up the marble stairs to the Pedestal of Time. Far behind him, the Princess Zelda resisted the insistent pulling of her Sheikah attendant, waiting to see what would happen to her chosen hero. And in the shadows, Ganondorf waited for his moment. Link reached out, grasped the hilt of the Master Sword, and pulled.

"It is mine!" declared the Gerudo magician, leaping toward the shaft of blue light that leapt from the floor. Zelda's eyes widened in fear, and she pulled away from Impa, rushing into the Temple of Time.

In Viridian City, Ash cried out: "Mewtwo, stop this! It has to end now!" The genetic Pokémon floated in the sky above him, raining destruction on the area around them.

"It is time to atone. Team Rocket will be destroyed for what they have done, and I will do it," he replied, psychic waves carrying his message without breath. "Their greatest weapon will be their downfall."

"This is crazy, Pikachu. He's going to blow up the whole city if we don't take him out. Go for it- thunderbolt attack!"

"Pikachu!" said the lightning mouse, racing into battle. He arced electricity at the psy-cat, but a simple gesture sent it sparking into the wreckage instead. Away from Nurse Joy, another Pokémon ran forward.

"Pichu!" cried the baby mouse, firing his own bolt at Mewtwo.

"It's not working!" said Ash, beginning to despair. "We'll need a miracle to get out of this… one… huh?" A pink ball was floating down from above, carried on the breeze. It landed and held a small stick above its head.

"Jigglypuff… jiggly-y-y-y puff… jiggly-y-y-y…" she sang.

In Sector Z, Falco said "I'm going in, Fox. Keep me covered," and rolled out of formation. "Chew on this, monkey-boy!" Falco's Arwing fired a salvo of laser bolts at the Venomian warship and started charging an energy torpedo.

"Falco, how can I cover you when you're doing a hundred and twenty through an asteroid field? You might as well ask me to shoot my own wing off." Falco was silent for a moment as he looped around and between a pair of colliding rocks. 

Then he came back on the communicator: "Would it be that hard? You're already pretty good at shooting your mouth off."

"Am I the squad leader here or not? Get back on my wing, we have a capital ship to protect," said Fox, pulling around aft.

"Fox, behind you- missile incoming!" yelped Slippy.

"I'm on it!" said Falco, and floored the accelerator.

In the former Kingdom of Altea, blades clashed as Marth rode into battle after his Altean Knights. They had a separate mission, and he was sure that Roy could handle it just fine. The prince was needed elsewhere, and any guards in his way were going to be greatly disappointed.

An armored figure appeared from nowhere, halberd glinting in the sun. In a flicker of motion, Falchion was in Marth's hand, sweeping to block. The two clashed, steel against steel locked in a contest of wills.

"Keep going, you've got to-" Roy cut himself off as a third soldier stabbed at him from the side. "Okay, maybe you can hang around a little longer."

"Glad to hear I'm wanted," replied Marth. "Down!" Roy dropped to the ground, dodging a slicing blade and leaving his attacker open to Marth's sudden return strike. That done, Roy sprang upright. He scanned the battlefield, and noticed slightly uneven odds.

"Were eight-to-one odds part of the plan?" he asked, back-to-back with the prince. "Because this doesn't seem like the kind of thing you usually try."

"Something is seriously wrong," Marth agreed, as more enemies charged the Knights.

On Icicle Mountain, Popo asked, "How much further, Nana?" His voice was faint against the howling winds, but she heard. He struggled to find another handhold on the sheer icy surface.

"Not long now!" his sister replied, unseen on a ledge above him. "But I don't like the looks of that buzzard. It looks like it's seen us!"

"In this?" demanded Popo, meaning the blinding white blizzard that raged around them. "I can't even see you, and you think you see a buzzard that sees me?"

"Just climb," Nana ordered. She heard another sound in the wind, and suddenly a dark shape raced past her, downward. "Fast!"

"What's the- oh." With the sound of a glass hammer striking an anvil, a spike of rock dropped by the buzzard drove into the mountain wall and broke the glacial surface. Even the ledge Nana watched from began to crack as Popo fell toward oblivion.

On the first lap of Big Blue, Captain Falcon pulled around the corner and put the pedal to the floor, racing into first place. But that was only a momentary lead, and unless he did something else, people were going to be giving him grief for the next two laps. Launching at high speed over a jump, the captain charged the hull of the Blue Falcon and sent it into a psychotic spin of destruction.

In that moment, Falcon realised how frazzled he must have been after the run-in with White Cat. He hadn't been thinking properly. You couldn't change direction in midair, and the shape of the track here meant that he was on a one-way course, and the destination was DOWN.

He knew this jump. He remembered seeing people crash and burn on this jump. In an unusual flash of philosophy, Captain Falcon wondered who would remember him.

In Dream Land, Kirby drifted on the breeze, scanning the islands below. It was a peaceful day, but he couldn't be too careful. In fact, down below… He dove toward the ground, and as he got closer Kirby saw a dark armored figure moving through the woods. It was slashing without thought, carving down the foliage recklessly.

It occurred to Kirby as he prepared to stomp the Sword Knight into flatware that there was something odd about its behaviour. It wasn't trying to hide or conceal its rampage.

No time to worry about that. "Bad choice of firewood, ya tin-foil idiot!" Kirby began his transformation into a rock-

THUNK.

-And was taken out of the sky by a thrown sword. Of course, it was always possible that there was a Cutter Knight, waiting to ambush him when the first one caught his attention.

"Got to pay closer attention," laughed one of the evil knights, standing over Kirby. He drew back his sword and prepared to stab.

On Earth, or some version of it, Ness walked in the night. The world was a simpler place now that his quest was complete. And yet here he was, out at night again, searching the cliff at the edge of Onett. There was something drawing him to that place, something that called to his powers.

He hadn't bothered to contact the others for this. Ness knew he could count on them, but this was a call that said to come alone. Entirely unnecessary risk, he was sure of that. But logic wasn't going to change his decision. From the old crater where the meteorite had fallen, a bright light shone.

In the Kongo Jungle, DK swung from branch to vine, racing toward K. Rool's headquarters. Diddy and Daisy were trapped there, and only he could get them out. It would take some thrashing first, but that was never a problem. He knew K. Rool's minions almost as well as he knew this jungle.

Speaking of which, the vine he had just grabbed felt strangely scaly.

"Oh, man. This only happens in bad movies!" protested DK as the snake's fangs snapped shut, preparing to pump a few litres of venom into his wrist.

In deep space, the gunship belonging to Samus Aran was going through evasive manoeuvres that would have driven anyone stark staring insane if space featured a 'down'. As it was, the famous bounty hunter was currently trying violently to not throw up into her helmet while she repaired the inertial dampers.

"I hate space pirates," she commented, as sparks rained out of the expulsion manifolds. She ignored them and tried to patch the damaged conduits.

"I know," the ship's new AI replied.

"How are we doing?" asked Samus, almost conversationally.

"My evasion protocols and randomizing subroutines are performing perfectly, considering that this is their first field test."

"We've lost them, then?"

"Ah, no. They seem to have set up something of a relay ambush. Just as we evade one group, another springs out of hyperspace."

"So what we're looking at here is death by attrition?"

"It would seem so."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Eighty-seven percent chance of horrible burning destruction."

"Right. What about a direct confrontation?" The ship rocked again as a new fighter got a lock and fired on her cruiser.

"We would not be able to destroy all of the fighters before their capital ship could make the mini-jump to catch us here."

"And what's it got for weapons?"

"Positron-based Disjunction class torpedoes, and I theorize that they may have a Chaos-class quasar radiation cannon onboard."

"With bells on, I expect. Will you turn off that klaxon?!"

"Very well. Three kilometres to the capital ship."

"What? I thought we outran that!"

"I would seem to have made a pre-emptive jump through a subspace node and simply let the fighters herd us toward it. Ah, and it does have the Chaos cannon."

"How do you know that?"

"It's firing. Four seconds to impact. Two. One."

"And now all that stops. A bit unfair to their enemies, I suppose, but so much more satisfying. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I would have to say that it would be much safer to let things take their course. This is an unnecessary risk."

"Bah. Maybe under normal circumstances. But in this place, I rule. How are they doing?"

"No adverse effects apparent from the temporal stasis. Preparing to bring them through. Where should I put them, boss?"

"My Mushroom Kingdom should suffice. Plenty of space to spread them all out, and lots of good places to die. Spread them at… one kilometre intervals, in their dimensional groupings."

"All of them, boss?"

"Now that's a bad plan."

"Did I ask you? Send them through. Now. Heh heh heh. Welcome to MY world, you impudent 'heroes'. Welcome to your final destination."

"I thought _we-_"

"Shut up. Our guests are emerging."


	2. Not Exactly Unified

**[Author's Notes]**  First real chapter up, and there's just about no chance of understanding this unless you read the prologue, so if you skipped that, hit the Back button right now.  I'll wait.  Done?  Good.  And now on to the explosive, electric, flaming, frozen, extremely well-muscled and generally not-the-type-of-thing-you-want-to-get-into-a-fight-with first chapter.  Well, that's at least not a bad description of the characters.  Oh, come on.  Give me a break.  Just read the thing, and review, if only to complain about bad jokes.  Ja mata ne!

**Not Exactly Unified**

In all those places (except the last) there was a blazingly bright flash of darkness and everything turned inside out, only backwards.

Really.

When the effects subsided, a great many people were almost as confused as they were baffled.  Unfortunately, the degree to which they were baffled was nothing compared to how much they ached.  So many heroes…  Let us begin with the Hylians.

Link staggered to his feet a few moments after waking up.  Putting most of his weight on the Master Sword, he managed to get upright and stay there long enough to see what was around him.  From there on in, shock kept him from falling over again.

The surrounding lands were covered in bright green grass, an unnatural green that looked right without feeling right.  The clouds were round and fluffy, and the ground was a pleasant, sandy colour.  Link had never been quite so unnerved in his life.  Also, everything seemed just a little bit smaller than it should have been.

This thought and all others were immediately crushed by the awesome force that was his next realisation; namely that an astonishingly beautiful young woman that could really only be Zelda was lying on the ground in front of him.  She groaned as consciousness -the good and the bad parts- returned to her.

"Where are we?" she asked, looking groggily at their surroundings.  "Could this be the Sacred Realm?"  Zelda turned to Link, and decided that no one with that look on their face could be listening to anyone.  "Link?"

"Maybe you haven't noticed, princess," Link said, "but you're suddenly a lot older than I remember."

"So are you," she said, holding up a pocket mirror.  Link stared at his older face in disbelief.  "We were in the Temple of Time, remember.  Perhaps one must be a certain age to enter the Sacred Realm."

"It doesn't look all that Sacred to me.  I think maybe we should be going really soon before we find out what it did with Ganondolt," he suggested, and did his best to pull the princess down the path.

Link didn't have long to wait.  At that moment, the King of Evil emerged from the minor foliage clad in his black armor, a menacing effect rather ruined by the small elvish boy in a green tunic that was both gripped by, and clinging upside down to, his arm.  It was waving a short sword and hacking with absolutely no effect at the hard metal gauntlets.

"I will see to it that you have a particularly painful death, boy, for bringing me to this false-" and then he saw the Hero of Time.

"There's no way that I'll ever let you-" Young Link began, and then he saw Zelda.  "Princess?  Who's the pointy-eared guy?"

"What is-a this place?" demanded Mario.  "This is-a not the Mushroom Kingdom."

"Any idiot can see that," Bowser growled.  "But it is supposed to look like it, I would think.  Not a trap; you aren't the type.  Peach?"

"This green clashes with my dress.  Can we get some decent plants over here, Toad?  Hey, where's Toad?"

"Probably in-a your pocket," Luigi commented.  "Why should-a we believe you didn't do this, Bowser?"

"Please.  We don't need any tricks for a good battle.  Our feud is an ancient game, one with rules and a very satisfying victory for both sides.  Up until I lose."  

"So maybe you're-a tired of-a losing," Dr Mario suggested.

"But that's not the point.  Someone isn't playing by the rules here, and I intend to make that person suffer.  Anyone who wants to come with me may feel free."  Yoshi nodded after some consideration, but looked to see what Mario decided.

"Most-a words I 'ave ever heard-a him say at-a one time.  Let's go, Yoshi.  Princess?"  Mario bowed to Peach and gestured for her to ride the dragon.  Luigi was still uncertain.

"Work-a with Bowser?" repeated Luigi.

"We've-a done it before.  Bowser knows what-a he is talking about."

"He is a villain, after all," Dr Mario agreed.

"Good-a point."

"Let's go then," said Luigi.

They set off to follow the Koopa King down the path, searching for this new enemy.  Peach looked confused for a moment.  She turned around in the saddle to look at the brothers.

"Is there someone extra here?" she asked.

"This isn't any planet I know, Fox."

"Falco, for the last time, we didn't crash.  For one thing, there would be a lot more bits around, partially Arwing and partially us."

"Okay, fine."  He made a sweeping gesture with both blue-feathered wings.  "What is this place?"

"My own personal hell?  Trapped in primary-colour land with only you to talk to?  And where's my gun?"

"In its holster.  In that tree that looks sort of like a yew.  Third branch from the top."  With the legendary sight of a raptor, Falco scanned the horizon, or as close as he could get.  "There's something like a hill over there; if there's anything like civilisation here, I'll be able to see it."

Feeling much better with a trigger close to hand, Fox snapped the charge over to the fresh backup cell in a traditional lock 'n' load motion.  "Sounds like something to do.  Falco, I'm really disoriented, out of my cockpit, and have been placed on a very strange world by someone who is keeping me from my job.  I feel like shooting something."

"I know the first rule is 'get to high ground'," Roy began.

"But you're smart enough to know that means we can be seen from anywhere.  Don't worry about it.  We're surrounded by water anyway," Marth pointed out.  "We're probably safe as we can be in the circumstances."

They waited, and thought, and tried to figure out where they could be.

"Damn," Marth decided after several minutes.

"Yeah," Roy agreed.

They were still waiting and trying to think of a plan when a figure in purple and red climbed the last few stairs that circled the strangely cylindrical hill they waited on.

"All right, what's going on here?" demanded Captain Falcon.  "I should be crispy pea-meal bacon right now and instead I'm in some kindergarten painting.  What did you do?"

"Squire?" suggested Marth to Roy.

"One that hasn't figured out the purpose of armor?" offered Roy, but Marth had already turned toward Captain Falcon.

"I could ask you the same question, but somehow I don't think you'd be any help.  I'm Marth, Prince of Altea and descendant of the hero Anri.  This is Roy, leader of the Altean Knights."

"Hey," Roy said with a small wave.

"I'm Captain Falcon, greatest F-Zero racer and bounty hunter the galaxy has ever seen.  You boys had better watch yourself around me."

"You think you want to take on a plate-mailed knight when you have no sword and appear to have tried to make armor out of... some kind of paint, maybe?" asked Roy.

"I think I could beat you 'armored' pansies into the ground," Captain Falcon replied as though speaking to a kid who didn't understand English too well yet.

"Like the flower?" asked Roy, slightly confused by Falcon's remark.  Falcon drew his gun and shot Roy in the arm.  He almost seemed surprised that it was at a low setting.

"Ow!  What the hell?" yelped Roy, clutching at his arm.

"Not a squire, then.  Must be a wizard of some kind," said Marth, rising to his feet.  "I wasn't going to bother before, but you attack one of my Knights and I get angry."

Captain Falcon set the blaster to full power and fired a shot at Marth, who moved like he was in a strobe light and -with a sound like a winged bolt of lightning- deflected the bolt off of Falchion.

"What the-" Captain Falcon began, and aimed another shot at Marth, but at that moment the gun was blasted out of his hand.  It arced almost gracefully through the air and dropped into the water, where it sank instantly.

Cap didn't notice this too much, even though it was an important loss, because the figure who had shot the weapon was now stepping between them.

"You'll live to regret that," Captain Falcon warned.

"Only if those two are more than I can handle," Samus replied.  "As it is, I don't like people getting inexplicably ventilated.  Now can anyone tell me what's going on?"

Marth started to explain that they didn't know either, but before he was more than a few words in a pair of short people in parkas climbed over the edge of the hill.

"Not a bad climb," said Popo as he helped Nana over the top.  "No ice, no buzzard, just a flat-"

"That guy over there looks worse than a buzzard," said Nana, noticing the others before her brother.  "More sadistic, too."

"Hmm.  You may be right.  Weird people, though.  Freakishly tall."

"Your sword hand itching, Marth?" asked Roy.

"Nope."

"For the last time, I don't know where your trainer is," said a new voice.

"Pika, pika pikachu!"

"That's strange.  It is now," Marth corrected himself.  The Pokémon group rounded the final curve of the stairs and found themselves in the middle of a war that hadn't started yet.  There was silence for a moment.

"This really can't be good," Kirby said.  Immediately he regretted drawing the attention to himself (since everyone turned to see who had spoken), and prepared to jump over the edge of the grass-topped pipe that was the 'hill'.  Unfortunately, that space was filled with rapidly rising Yoshi.  Peach slipped out of the saddle once Yoshi landed, brushing dust off her dress.

The Mario Brothers (all three of them) and Bowser also reached the summit, via several routes.  It was starting to get crowded on the pipe top, and like any compressed substance the baffled heroes were preparing to decompress with explosive force.  There were various whisperings milling about aggressively.

"Okay, we've got enough people to colonize a small planet here; does _someone_ know what's happened?" demanded Samus.

"I'm just about ready to break something if I don't get some answers," said Bowser, glaring at the clustered heroes and villains.  "Surely there can't be more than two such gatherings of ignorance in the world, and we've already identified Mario and Luigi."

"What are we talking about here?" asked Fox.

"I've got a guess: who knows what's going on?"

"You're smarter than you look, Falco."

The pipe-hill shook tremendously, almost knocking off some of the people on the edges.  A pointy-eared young woman who would have had 'Princess' written down the middle if you cut her in half (as Ganondorf would prefer) materialised at the edge in a shower of green sparks.  She was staring over the edge, and didn't notice the crowd behind her.

"Puffballs and talking foxes and bloody elves!" screamed Samus.  "What the hell is going on?!"  Zelda turned around, startled.

"_Oh, very well.  Bring them up._"  

Over the edge of the pipe floated Ganondorf and the two Links, so locked in a life-or-death struggle that they didn't even notice the hovering for a few moments.  They were followed by a huge ape and a little kid trying to fend him off with a bat.  The combatants were placed on the surface and found that they couldn't move their feet enough to get close and attack.

"_I wouldn't bother with anything of that sort, anyway,_" said the voice when they struggled to free themselves.  "_In any case, I believe you are looking for answers, aren't you?  I have them all."_

"All right, where are we?" demanded Marth.

"Who died and made you ruler?" snapped Bowser.

"My father," Marth replied, puzzled.

"_While this is quite enjoyable, I must insist that you stay quiet for now.  I will ask and answer all questions for you._

"_Firstly, you are currently in My __Mushroom__ _Kingdom___.  I have brought you here from your respective parallel and perpendicular dimensions to what I will call, for the sake of simplicity, the real world.  This place is a subsection of the transversal dimension, which connects all parallel and perpendicular existences.  You yourselves are all manifest here, in various forms, on a planet called Earth.  Not that it matters.  What does matter is that right now, you are in my part of the universe, and I control all."_

"This does not bode well," Ganondorf muttered, aware that there were worse things in existence than he, and entirely unwilling to meet any of them.

"_Shut up.  Furthermore, I have brought you here for my own purposes, and I don't expect any of you shall ever return.  On the plus side, you won't be around to be homesick.  I'm not going to be subtle here: I fully expect all of you to die within the next few days.  Although, of course, there's always the possibility that you could find your way out and into My Kongo Jungle…_"

"Yeah, and we're really likely to go there now that you've hinted at it," Samus snarled.  "You're really going for this not-subtle approach."

"It can't be that bad.  I live in the Kongo Jungle," DK said.

"And we live-a in the real-a Mushroom Kingdom, but this isn't it."

"_I'm telling the truth- you have a better chance of survival there than here.  Of course, if you want, you could live off berries for the rest of your lives.  Oh, wait, there aren't enough.  And you'd still be dead, eventually.  I win no matter what._"

"So why not kill us now?" asked Kirby, defiantly.

"Shutupshutupshutupshutup!" hissed Roy.

"_Alas, you have named the one thing I cannot do.  Warp space?  All very well.  Halt time?  To a degree.  But killing you would cause something of a power feedback that… why am I telling you, anyway?  I'm starting to sound like the secret villain who tells the hero about his world-destroying bomb and the deactivation sequence right before turning on the kill-o-matic…_"  The voice sighed, wearily, and then it was gone.

The sky began to darken as the sun reached the horizon.  The heroes and villains looked around uncertainly, not much less confused than they were before.

"Well," said Marth, demonstrating his occasional astonishing ability to say exactly the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time in the worst possible way (moderately cheerfully, in this case).  "We'd better set up a camp or something."  Then he rubbed his hands together (no one knows why anyone does this; the perpetrators seem to believe that they are somehow improving morale and creating an urge to do heavy lifting by this motion).

Bowser turned, slowly, and gave Marth a venomous, withering glare.

"And you think we're going to listen to you, do you?"

"Yeah," said Cap Falcon, "I'm getting tired of being ordered around."

"Shut up, you slimy excuse for a bounty hunter.  I doubt you could think hard enough to survive here on your own anyway," Samus muttered.

"Oh, so I suppose you're saying there's something wrong with mercenaries, huh?" demanded Falco, ruffling his feathers.

"Actually, I _am-_" a bounty hunter, she meant to continue, but Falco thought he had his answer and didn't like it much.  He expressed this through the subtle and cunning method of a full-body tackle.

"Pikachu!" screamed the thunder mouse, who had been caught under Samus as she fell, and he struck them both with lightning, as well as several bystanders.  Then everything went to hell very quickly and efficiently.

Ness had been disoriented enough for his own tastes when he had been dropped into some sort of cartoonish world and run into and angry monkey.  Being picked up and used as a bludgeon by said monkey was not his idea of improvement.  Zapping DK with psychic power, he slipped from the ape's grasp and attempted to get out of the fray.  It was impossible to clear a path for more than a second or two, so Ness settled for smacking anything that got near him with his bat.

Link, in the meantime, was sharing guard duty of Zelda with his younger self, sword clanging off of armor, scales, and some of the oddest forms of shields he had ever seen.  Behind them, Zelda was watching the battle with increasing anger.

"Stop it!" she yelled, but it was lost in the rage of battle.  "I…  SAID…"  Power flowed through her, and light exploded in all directions.  The wave blasted outward and knocked over the combatants, as well as causing some very impressive lighting effects.  "**STOP IT!**"

"I hate to sound cliché," said Zelda, once she had everyone's attention and the ground had stopped shaking, "but we won't survive long with everyone at everyone else's throats.  Here and now, we either split up and hope we're all strong enough to make it on our own, or we travel as one.  Personally, I think that any villain –I'm not talking to you, Ganondorf, sit down and shut up- can be beaten if you find their weakness.  So unless someone has a better plan, let's find out what that weakness is and get the hell back to our own worlds."

The fighters thought this over a bit.  "I suppose," Bowser admitted, "she does raise a good point.  Very well.  Let us return to the Mushroom Kingdom together, Mario.  Until that time I set aside our feud."

"This princess is right- Pichu, that means no frying," said Mewtwo.

"Bite me," Pichu suggested.

"You can speak English?"

"I doubt it.  Never really tried before, I suppose."

"More likely it's related to being here instead of home," said Pikachu.

"Okay, so who's the leader?" asked Falco, sceptically.

"Sure as hell not him," said Samus, jerking her thumb at Cap Falcon.

"No one," called Popo from everyone else's waist height.  "There are only a couple dozen of us; we decide by consensus."  A chorus of agreement went up, ranging from 'Perfect' to 'Good plan' to 'Ah, why the heck not?'

In the silence of the night, with all the Smash Bros encircling a fire, Samus was bandaging her arm when she noticed the monkey apparently brooding over something as he stared into the flames.

"What's up?"

"Just wondering what's happening to Diddy and Daisy without me," he muttered.  "Are they okay?  What if K Rool…"

"Well, one more reason to get out of here soon, I guess.  Although I doubt anything at all will happen without us.  Probably some sort of time stasis, or else he'd get temporal instabilities when-"

"Hey, I'm just an ape, okay?"

"Right."  Samus' gaze took in the rest of the warriors, most of whom were lost in their thoughts.  When she glanced at Marth he quickly looked away, winning the Samus Aran Most Well-Failed Attempt At Nonchalance Award.  Within the privacy of her helmet, Samus laughed a bit, very quietly.

"You're a pretty good fighter," she commented.  "Strong, fast- but not much technique.  I could teach you a bit."

"Really?" asked DK.  "Thanks.  When can we start?"

"What's the absolute minimum amount of sleep you can function with?"

"Six or seven hours, I guess."

"I'll wake you up in five."


	3. On The Road To Ruin, Or Possibly Kongo J...

**On The Road To Ruin, Or Possibly Kongo Jungle**

                Kirby was a creature of habit.  Most of his habits included vacuuming up any food within reach and falling asleep in battle.  But another was waking up in time to see the sun rise every morning, just in case it had become edible during the night.

                Now he sat at the edge of the pipetower, waiting in the paleness before dawn, and watching the orange woman try to teach the monkey technique.

                "Okay, that's good, but if you curve your hand just a little, you'll have a better chance of not breaking anything.  You see, the bone structure-"

                "Just an ape," DK interjected.

                "Right.  Try it again."

                Fox rolled over in his uneasy sleep.  Kirby reached out instinctively and shoved him back before he rolled right over the edge.

                "This just won't work," said Samus, eventually.  In the time it took for DK to try one of the complicated techniques he was supposed to be learning, Samus had tied his feet together with the Grappling Beam and was now sitting on his head.

                "Sorry," said DK, looking up at the bounty hunter.

                "It's not your fault," she assured him.  "I'm not thinking right.  I need to teach in a different way.  You're smart for an ape, I can tell you that much, but…"

                "I know, I know.  Don't think I don't know most people are a lot smarter than me," said DK, wearily.  "Hey, what's spandex boy want?"  Samus turned to see Captain Falcon coming up behind them, grinning in a rather repulsive way.

                "Hi there.  I see you're trying to show this monkey a bit of skill.  Maybe later you could show me something too," he suggested, his grin grating on Samus a little more every moment.

                "I thought you and I had a sort of you-stay-away-from-me-I-don't-waste-you agreement," said Samus.  To his credit, this didn't shake Cap in the least.

                "Well, maybe yesterday just started out wrong.  And last night I had this dream-"  Suddenly aware of where he was going with this, Samus spun around and delivered a textbook crescent kick to Cap's helmeted head.  It turned him around and lay him flat out on the ground.

                A foot planted firmly on the small of his back, Samus leaned over and said "You say one thing about liking girls with spirit and I fire a missile _right _up_-"_

                "Hey, cool down," said DK.  Samus let out a deep breath and realised he was right.  Even Falcon might be necessary if they were going to get out of here, and just because he was a jerk didn't mean he deserved flames.  If you took away someone's right to be a jerk, well… everyone was boring.

                "All right, get back with the others," she said, and let the racer back up.

                "No need; they're on their way," DK pointed out.  And indeed, from the top of the pipetower the entire contingent of heroes was coming down to ground level.

                "I just want to know why there are two Marios," said Peach.

                "And what's up with the old and normal versions of me?" asked Young Link.

                "Who says you're the normal one?"

                "I really can't explain it," said Mewtwo.  "This is beyond me."

                "I'd suggest that whatever magic this common enemy of ours wields is imperfect.  Surely he wouldn't want more of us to deal with?" said Ganondorf.

                "Actually, the more of us he gets, the more he can destroy.  And remember, he doesn't think we're going to live much longer," said Fox.

                "I've always liked life-or-death challenges," Falco commented.

                "So if he is trying to get more of us, then he must have used some inherent power in the situation when we were pulled out of our own worlds," Zelda suggested.

                "Whatever that means, yes," said Link.

                "The princess raises a good point.  You, Links, were in the middle of some time-warp when you were pulled in.  Our enemy must have used that time-warp to catch you at two different ages, allowing him to destroy two timelines of one hero at once," said Mewtwo.  "He did mention multiple dimensions, after all."

                "And you believed him?" said Fox.

                "How else do you explain the elves, puffballs, talking animals, talking animals with magical powers, and those two midgets in parkas?" said Yoshi.  "Oh, and the dragon."

                "You're a dragon?" repeated Ganondorf with disbelief.

                "Yes," said Yoshi, bristling a little, or at least trying to.

                "Volvagia would die of shame," said the King of Evil, shaking his head.

                "What _about Volvagia?" demanded Zelda._

                "What?  I happen to know the name of an ancient dragon of evil and suddenly you're accusing me of plotting to unleash it upon the Gorons?" snapped Ganondorf.  He glared at her for a moment, then slapped his forehead.  "I have to learn to stop doing that."

                "As _incredibly fascinating as all of this is, or would be to people who gave a damn, what are we going to do next?" asked Marth.  "I happen to have left my kingdom in a little bit of a _war situation_ and I'd like to get back fast!"_

                The other heroes, facing similar cases, and the villains, being the causes of those cases, readily agreed and began considering the problem they faced, namely trying to get from one universe to another.  It wasn't one that came up in day-to-day princessing, mountain climbing, freeing a kingdom or F-Zero racing, so a lot of them were left out, but that wasn't going to stop them.  Heroes rarely consider absolute impossibility to be more than an annoying delay.

                "That voice said that we'd do better in My Kongo Jungle or some such place, didn't it?" asked Jigglypuff.

                "Nothing that looks like a mutant gum bubble should be able to talk," said Young Link.

                "But if this is-a 'My' Mushroom-a Kingdom…" said Mario, hesitantly.

                "Then I don't wanna _think_ about what the Kongo Jungle's going to be like, and I live there," DK told them fervently.

                "It's at least a step, right?  Nothing's ever easy for humans, but even the slightest opening is going to end up leading to the way home.  You learn these things in the adventuring business," Link assured the others.  Mario, Pikachu, Luigi, Ness, and Samus all nodded their solemn agreement.

                "No place as tropical as a jungle is going to be anywhere near this geological atrocity," said Mewtwo, glaring at the unreal plants that surrounded them.  "We're looking for an interdimensional fissure, I expect."

                "A what?" asked Kirby.

                "A hole that leads from one place to another without actually going anywhere," Fox explained.

                "Still got nothing," growled Bowser, shaking his huge head.

                "It's like magic, okay?" Ness offered, frowning.

                "Ohhhh," said several of the low-tech-world heroes, nodding.

                "We'll know it when we see it, type of thing?" suggested Nana.

                "Or we won't recognise it, but that'll be the same thing, going backwards," said Popo, looking pleased with himself.  Samus shook her head sadly, adjusted her visor to what she guessed would be the best wavelengths, and headed off down a sickeningly happy sandy path.  The others followed, though Bowser took the time to scorch some of the flowers, especially those in Plague Yellow and Unnatural Pink.

                They walked in silence for a time, until it started to become uncomfortable.  Well, uncomfortable for some.  In truth, both Links were used to solo adventuring (which was quiet except for the shrieks of pain), the Ice Climbers tended not to talk much while travelling from one point to another (in case the 'another' suddenly became, rather than a ledge, the ground far below) and many of the others simply weren't talkative, instead getting easily lost in their thoughts.

                Marth, however, was nervous, and when he was nervous, all his usual leadership skills got nervous too, and went out for long therapeutic massages and let their assistants, who usually stayed in the Don't Act Like This department, watch the metaphorical store for a while.

                "Hey, how about a marching song?" he suggested.  

                Among the disbelieving stares Bowser rumbled, "You come from another world, so I'll forgive you.  But I don't suppose any wizards or whatever you've got have ever mentioned the Koopa Kingdom to you, from some kind of interdimensional scrying or whatever jargon you use?"

                "No…" Marth replied, with the strong feeling that he didn't like this direction.

                "Ah.  Well, then, keep in mind, if you're ever there, that marching songs within my realm are punishable by scorpion pit."

                "Really?" said Marth, suddenly manically cheerful, because he had just noticed that Bowser had biceps the size of his torso and exceptionally large claws.

                "It's worse for mime artists," Bowser went on, possibly just to avoid the suggestion of anything else that could be perpetrated to pass the time.  (Unknown to him, Popo and Nana were making a pact at that moment to hammer each other unconscious if anyone did try a folk song.)  "They're taken out into the middle of the desert inside a huge sock, and we let them go.  Hah!  As if they could make it."

                "You-a do know those-a huge socks protect-a you from-a those black snappers-" Luigi said, or tried to, but Mario stomped on his foot and they held a brief, meaningful discussion in Italian.

                Marth, who was still having visions involving claws and scorpions, walked on in mute terror.

                "You're so violent," Peach said to Bowser, highly disapproving.  "Scorpions!  Really!"

                "What do you do to offenders in your Kingdom, Princess?  Make them wear clashing outfits for a month?  Or maybe sauté them?  I've always wondered what those little mushroom-headed things taste like, do you know?" asked the king.

                "That's absolutely disgusting!" Peach said, because she had wondered once or twice herself.

                "I really am quite curious.  Do you have cells, or do you make them work in the kitchens?  Personally, I'd go for the kitchen duty, it would add a certain level of extra terror.  Being a talking ingredient would probably lead to constant fear of being part of the next stew," Bowser went on.

                "Ever heard of turtle soup?" Samus muttered, because she was getting tired of it all.

                "So my question-" Roy began.

                "No one cares!" several of the others snapped in unison.

                "-is what exactly this voice-" he went on, and Marth snapped back into reality.

                The prince of Altea whirled around, knowing what his right-hand knight was like in these situations.  "Don't let him finish!"  And there was the kind of tone in Marth's voice that comes from being true royalty, one that made it easier to rise from the dead than disobey.

                Roy's face took on a perturbed look as several of the heroes gave in and turned to rush him.  "-thinks is so dangerous – ow, that was my _foot- that we're all going to be – get off – dead in a matter of days," he finished, climbing out of the crush of warriors looking for an emotional release.  Aside from Marth, who had simply slapped a hand over his eyes and was apparently praying to the gods that he be struck by lightning, everyone was slowly edging away.  With a kind of inevitability, Roy turned around._

                Bowser stood there with his head reared back, a wearing a look of extreme concentration, and faintly glowing white.  None of them knew what he was doing, but they would soon enough.  For now, it was enough for Roy that heroes don't die unless it's the required bitter motivation for a child, sibling, or friend to take up the quest.

                Roy ducked, and the very instant Bowser began to swing forward, another shape swung down from an overhanging tree, landing an amazing kick in the dragon-turtle's solar plexus that sent him rolling backwards.

                "What the heck is that?" Pichu demanded.  It was human, more or less.  It just didn't have most of the things that make a human a human.  For one thing, it was entirely made up of a grid of energetic purple lines that wrapped around into the shape of a tall woman, though in this case a distinct lack of clothes served to unnerve the male contingent of heroes more than they would have expected.

                The only other features of it were a strange cross-marked red circle where its face should have been and a sort of cut-down skeleton made up of glowing pink bars that connected its limbs to the single red heart at its core.

                Some things, though, are bone-deep.  "Hi there, I'm Falco Lombardi," said the StarFox pilot, adjusting his flight jacket to look, in his opinion, more attractive.

                'She' replied by just barely leaping into the air, lashing out sideways with a lightning-fast kick that launched Falco backwards into a cluster of heroes, and landing again perfectly without even disturbing the dust.

                "Haven't I told you about saying things like 'what's so dangerous'?" murmured Marth, watching the wireframe.

                "Not recently," Roy replied, also locked onto it.

                It turned, glared at them with nothing but a red insignia and _still_ beating Bowser on all but his worst days, and snapped its fingers.  Out of the sky dropped another wireframe, this one 'male' and not looking like it was the playful one either.

                Then they charged, and a melee began.  

**[Author's Notes]**  Next chapter'll be up soon, I guarantee it.  Make it faster by pressing 'review'. It works, really.


	4. Enter: The Wireframes

**Enter: The Wireframes**

                Apparently not disturbed by the odds -though really anything that didn't mind foliage in neon green and millions of flowers with tiny happy faces at their cores would have to be inhuman anyway- the male and female-shaped warriors moved with perfect ease and calm, predators on their home turf.

                The wireframes waded with fear into a crowd of warriors from across the multiverse, and most of them soon found out why this was.  Mario wound up and delivered a good old Mushroom Kingdom uppercut to the male, the kind of punch that would drop a demigod at the least.

                "Mama Mia!" he shouted, falling back and rubbing his battered and perhaps broken hand.  The wires felt like steel, and were as unshakeable as Princess Peach's belief that pink went with everything.  The wireframe advanced on Mario, dealing out a jab-hook-longarm combination that sent the hero of the real Kingdom to the ground in a little private world of hurt.

                Fox unleashed a volley of kicks against the thing's side, managing to beat the hell out of his boot and not even shaking the warrior.  Meanwhile, the wireframes themselves were wreaking havoc.  The female had quickly located Falco again, picking him up by the beak and winging the bird over her shoulder.  It was nearly interrupted by a punch from DK, but it dodged the first swing and then was too fast to bother with the rest.  DK whirled through the air groaning "Oh, not this one again," and then came crashing back down to earth some distance away, taking Roy down with him.

                Ganondorf had more or less entered into a duel with the male, except that it paused to fight off any other attacks from the heroes as well.  Ganondorf threw two high punches and then swept around with a low kick.  The wireframe leaned out of both punches, caught Peach's arm coming around in a wicked slap and threw her down, leapt over the kick, and smashed Pikachu out of the fight for a while.

                It looked to Ness as though the simple overwhelming odds in favour of the heroes were taking an effect on the female wireframe.  She didn't seem to be taking any damage, but having Pichu on one leg, Popo on the other, Ness hanging onto her arms and Nana on her shoulders flailing with her hammer was _definitely_ slowing down the rate at which she could take down the others.

                Ganondorf attempted another attack routine, one that he had only ever seen Nabooru manage to avoid injury from.  The wireframe took a moment while it was sideways in midair to drive its fist into Marth's midsection, and then landed and went on the offensive.

                It was as though their roles had been reversed, so quickly was Ganondorf in retreat and the wireframe advancing.  Ganondorf was still a master of hand-to-hand combat, and wasn't hit too badly, but he was a little bit slower on the uptake of some things than was good for him.

                So shocked by the sudden switch of roles, Ganondorf spun and landed a solid kick on Link's chest, sending the newly-titled Hero of Time sprawling in the dust.  "Sorry!" Ganondorf yelped, cringing like a society lady who has just put the last cup on a stack of dishes and then watched it topple, spilling the remains of _something au gratin_ all over a Persian rug.  He was the King of Evil, but that didn't make him one-dimensional.

                The male wireframe took the opportunity to attempt to put his arm through Ganondorf's head by way of his ear.  This didn't work, Gerudos being a sturdy people, but it did send him into the land of dreams, and when he woke up later, he rambled for hours about thousands of Kirby-like pixies.

                "Hey!" a voice shouted, and a primary-yellow rock bounced off its head.  The wireframe turned and then everything went bright blue, because Samus had brought her Grapple Beam back online.  Having locked onto its head successfully, the bounty hunter swung madly, whirling the wireframe around like a tetherball and smashing it into whatever hard objects presented themselves.

                "Get out of the way, I can't hit it!" Fox shouted, his blaster levelled.

                "If I move, we're both going to regret it!" Ness replied, still using all of his strength and a good deal of psychic power to keep the female wireframe's arms immobile.

                "I don't get it!" Captain Falcon raged.  "No matter how hard we hit them, they don't slow down!"

                Zelda looked over at Samus, who appeared to be competing for the medal in judo and rhythmic gymnastics at the same time.  "Then maybe what we should be doing is hitting it with the only thing we know of that's just as hard."

                "Ganondorf's head?" suggested Young Link.

                "I don't see you helping out," Mewtwo snapped.

                "What?!  He's a bad guy!" Young Link protested.

                "But he's on our side," Zelda admitted.  "For now.  And what I _meant was the other wireframe."_

                "Lost," Young Link said, a blank look on his face.

                "Oh, why am I bothering with talking anyway?  Princessing ruins your ability to act," Zelda grumbled, heading for the Chozo-armored woman.

                "Um… oh, what's her name…  Hey!  Samus!  I think these two should get to know each other better!"

                "I don't think I can be that accurate from this distance!" the bounty hunter warned, still swinging.

                "Then aim for me!" Yoshi called, leaping on top of a large boulder by the path's side.

                "I've never liked cruelty to animals," Samus muttered, but decided she couldn't delay.  With one final twist, she sent the wireframe orbiting around her, then -_fizzle_- deactivated the beam.  It spun through the air, straight for Yoshi, but the dragon had indeed thought ahead, and caught it with his tongue.  Yoshi himself spun once, swinging the wireframe around again and closer toward the female, but still off.

                Young Link leapt into the action, hookshot at the ready, and performed a third relay.  He was much closer, and this time the wireframe torpedo was headed right on target.  Those smaller heroes trying to keep the female subdued saw the male coming and leapt for safety, but that just meant it was able to duck in time, coming up again like a malicious yo-yo and taking out Luigi with a low kick as he dove for its ankles.

                The complicated part, and one no one had considered, was Dr Mario.  He had been standing slightly out of the way, hoping that at some point soon there would be a vital need for humourously large pills, and not getting smoten in the meantime.  But when the female ducked, a ballistic wireframe was right on course for him, and he did the only thing that made sense… of a kind… which was to swing his cape-like coat at it.

                This proved more useful than he expected.  The wireframe reversed momentum instantly, suddenly rocketing into the female's back.  The sound was like the world's first electric cymbal.

                Very, very slowly, and with some staggering, both the wireframes got back up.  To Samus' surprise, she saw that she had actually done some damage by bashing the male around on the landscape, but the biggest dent was very clearly in the female's back, and she didn't look happy about it.  The red heart-cores in both of them were pulsing from dark to their former glow and down again.

                Those heroes still standing were gaining certain glints in their eyes that meant bad things were about to happen to bad people.

                Peach was the first to reach the connection that if a solid beating was what was needed, she would be involved, and produced her old combat frying pan, the one she had kept ever since that mess with the seven stars and a huge sword.  Despite not being crafted in any ancient mine by dwarves who had had visions in the night or out of the horseshoes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it was as hard as diamond, if diamond could have been tempered.

                "How _dare you _strike_ my __Mario!" she screamed, beating the male about the head.  She was about to be attacked from behind by the female, except that at that moment a spotted egg dropped in from above and exploded, sending the inhuman woman flying.  Yoshi wound up another, but never threw it.  Luigi had just managed to shake off the stars exploding in his brain and got to his feet.  An Italian battle cry echoed across the unnaturally green fields, and Luigi grabbed the female by the wrists, spinning around until he at last let go, and the wireframes crashed together for the second time._

                Bowser stumbled up beside Zelda.  "Where have you been?" she demanded.

                "That orange armoured psychopath hit me with one of those wiry things."

                "Other way around.  She hit it with you," Zelda corrected.

                "Doesn't feel like that," Bowser rumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.  Suddenly a recent memory flashed into Zelda's mind, and she turned on the king.

                "Right before those wireframes turned up, you were glowing," Zelda stated quickly.  "You remember?  It looked like you were about to hit that guy, Roy, but you were just glowing for some reason.  What was that?"

                "I… don't really know," Bowser admitted.  "I was just sort of… gathering strength, I suppose.  I've never glowed before, mind you.  It just seemed like the right thing to do."

                "Do it again," Zelda commanded, and the force of royalty was in _her_ voice, too.

                "I'll try," Bowser growled, and he stomped over toward the battle while Zelda went to check on the injured heroes.

                Peach was continuing to meet all the male's thrashing needs for the next few millennia, but she was tiring, and couldn't help noticing that it was having much effect any more, as though it was getting used to it.  She swung one more time, and a hand reached up, catching the frying pan.  Peach looked shocked, and ran for it, hiding behind the first large obstacle available.  The wireframe got to its feet and came toward her, but as it looked up, it noticed that the obstacle was, in fact, a monstrous Koopa King preparing to unleash terrible wrath upon it.

                Growling in satisfaction, Bowser's hard skull and horns crashed down into the wireframe, and its form cracked.  The sheer force sent it flying up and away, breaking apart as it went, until it vanished in a mere sparkle among the too-cheerfully fluffy clouds.

                _A true Smash attack?__  That shouldn't be possible!  I made certain!  There were no miscalculations!  You do not have this power! the voice raged, still without source._

                "Tell that to your minion, assuming it doesn't hit the sun first!" Zelda shot back gleefully.

                _Bah!  This is not possible.  It was a fluke.  And I am not concerned.  The rest of you don't know how to do it, and well…  Bowser is about to die.  It laughed and faded away again._

                "What?" asked Bowser, confused.  Then the female wireframe's kick landed on his skull, sending him sprawling to the ground, unconscious.  It was battered and dented, but still it stood, and clearly intended to finish the job.

                To hell with _that.  Mario was a hero._

                His hand probably was broken, and Bowser was his enemy.  These were the two facts that he most carefully avoided thinking about as he stood up and approached the remaining wireframe.

                "You have-a got-a two choices," he told it.  "You can-a run, or you can-a burn."  He didn't know why burning came to mind, but it sounded right.  In more ways than one, really.  There was fire in his mind and his spirit…

                The wireframe glanced at him only briefly, decided a broken plumber was not a threat, and drew back an arm.  The wires separated and then twisted together again, this time in the shape of a spear.

                Mario, knowing this wasn't going to do a thing, but that he had to do it anyway, drew back his injured fist, swung forward, and at the last moment, on pure instinct, opened the punch into some kind of palm strike.

                He never connected.  From his hand came a burst of intense fire that caught the wireframe and blasted it like a cannon shot.  In deep silence, there was a flare of light from the blast that cast the tree-lined path into shadows and redness, and when it was over the female wireframe was sailing down the road.  After a few seconds in the air, the frame came apart, and the heart-core exploded in a rushing return of sound.  

                A shock wave rolled down past the heroes, and where the wireframe had been, a ring of shadow and lightning encircled a window into another land, casting the cartoon-like forest into stormy darkness.

                "Ah.  That'd be one of those holes in the world, right enough," said Pikachu.

                Most of the heroes were silent, but the sound of a zipper brought them back to reality.  Dr Mario had produced a large medical bag from… well, no one really knew where, but he was kneeling beside Link and putting on a stethoscope.

                He noticed their stares.  "It's-a pretty," he admitted.  "But-a I am better with-a fevers than-a anything starting with-a 'quantum'.  I think-a he'll be okay," he told Zelda.  She sighed.

                "I think I liked it better when I knew what in Hyrule was going on for more than five minutes at a time," she mumbled, and went to see if she could help the doctor.

**[Author's Notes]**  Well, it looks like fate is on their side, or perhaps the Lady (Prachett readers know who I mean), but either way the Smash Bros might have a chance.  Review if you want to find out what happens next.  And if you don't.  The important part is the button-pushing.


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